Tuesday, December 16, 2014

2014 Glamour, Beauty & The Nude Photography Workshop - Glamour Video Shoot with Elizabeth



The private shoot day is always the highlight of Rolando's workshops as you have the opportunity to collaborate with each individual model and work on all sorts of ideas. For the private shoot with Elizabeth (Invy Rose), we both agreed to focus on just creating a single video rather than a series of photos.  Wished I could have done both, but I only have two hands.

We unfortunately did not have Andrew as an assistant this year, so a lot of the setups that I had originally planned on shooting had to be simplified so that it could be done with a single person crew.

I also had to keep track of time so that I did not go over each models' scheduled session, which would have affected their session times with the other workshop participants. Since session time also has to account for travel to and from locations, it further limits the amount of shooting time you actually have. Thankfully Elizabeth and I already had a few shots completed from the previous day of shooting, so we were able to resume right where we left off.


This time we got a very early start, returning to Ironwood Beach first thing in the morning to shoot the rest of the footage we would need for the video.  All of the footage was shot with the Sony DSC-RX10, on a Manfrotto tripod & Edelkrone SliderPlus.

We started shooting in the same spot and same direction we had shot previously, but it wasn't until we flipped the setup around 180 degrees and shot with the sun behind Liz that the footage really started to rock.


Backlight from the sun and reflected light from the sand in front of her looked so amazing that I had to stop and take a few stills with the 5DmkIII.


Liz was simply stunning in front of the camera, and very determined to help me make the shoot a success.  Even when the odd tourist would walk by during our shoot, she told me to continue shooting until we got what we needed.


There were a lot things we shot that day that I really wanted to have stills of as well, but because of the limited amount of time we had and the fact that this was a single person crew, we had to prioritize getting just video footage. We simply just did not have the time or the crew to set up additional lighting and reflectors to really get great stills.

My apologies for the low quality of the screen grabs. Will probably be upgrading to 4K video in the near future to get higher quality stills from the video.


Editing in FCPX, once I had found and licensed the right music through Songfreedom.com, the piece started coming together surprisingly quick. The final version became one of my favorites of this year.


Invy Rose from Todd Mizomi on Vimeo.

See more of model Invy Rose's work by visiting her page on Facebook. To learn more about how you can sign up for future Beauty Glamour and the Nude workshops by Rolando Gomez, visit rolandogomez.net.

Monday, December 15, 2014

2014 Glamour, Beauty & The Nude Photography Workshop - Sunset Shoot with Ashley


Our private shoot session with model Ashley Alexiss was a sunset shoot on the beach in Kaanapali.


Lighting was with 2 Cheetahstand V850s in a Lastolite Ezybox Octa Softbox. Photographed with the Sony DSC-RX10.

It was great to end the private shoot day with Ashley.  She had a lot of energy and a great attitude. 
 Even after getting pummeled by a couple of waves, she kept on going...


You really need to bring your A-game when you shoot with her because she is simply amazing in front of the camera.

For this last shot, it was so dark that I literally could not see Ashley at all. In order to set the focus, we had Liz hold an iPhone in front of Ashley's face so that the camera could lock the focus on the screen.

We shot this with a long exposure (unlike our shoot in Hana, there were no red fire ants crawling all over Ashley this time) to bring up the exposure of the lights in the background.  It's something I've always wanted to try with city lights at night, but since we don't have big cities here on Maui, the hotels on Kaanapali Beach were the next best thing.

Really enjoyed this year's workshop and looking forward to the next one!  To learn more about Rolando's upcoming workshops, visit rolandogomez.net.


Monday, December 1, 2014

2014 Glamour, Beauty & The Nude Photography Workshop - Boudoir Video with Brittany Rhea


For the private shoot session with Brittany Rhea  I decided to work on creating a boudoir style video - something short, playful and fun.

We shot the majority of her footage with the Canon 7D on a Manfrotto monopod. For lenses, both the 85mm f1.8 lens and 24-105mm f4L IS lens were used.


For safety issues, the one shot where the camera was suspended above the model, the much lighter Sony RX10 was used.  Did not have the jib available, so we improvised a camera boom arm by using a Konova slider with one end attached to a Manfrotto tripod. The camera was then panned across the model from above.


For lighting we relied solely on the existing light that filtered throughout the bedroom.



Also played around with reflections in the mirror and some tulle material I had leftover from a previous shoot.


Brittany just rocked it in front of the camera. Whether stills or video, she was very confident and able to take direction well.  Although we only had two hours to shoot all of her footage, it turned out much better than I had planned.

The final video came together pretty quickly once I found the right music to go with it.  Edited it in FCPX on a Macbook Air.



Really enjoyed the opportunity to work with this amazing model, and hope to collaborate with her again in the near future!

See more of Brittany Rhea on Facebook